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UPDATE (Feb. 11, 2025, 3:48 p.m. ET): Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has asked the Justice Department's inspector general to investigate whether FBI director nominee Kash Patel perjured himself during his confirmation hearing last month when he said he was not aware of plans to fire FBI officials. Durbin said Tuesday that "multiple whistleblowers" indicated Patel "has been personally directing" the firings. A spokesperson for Patel dismissed the allegation as a "false narrative."
Sen. Durbin has asked DOJ’s Inspector General to investigate potential perjury by Kash Patel, I want to add that in addition to his live testimony at his 1/30 hearing, Patel submitted written answers to questions posed by more than a dozen senators on the Judiciary Committee after that hearing. Those questions includes multiple variations of inquiries about his knowledge/awareness of and participation in the FBI firings—and Patel’s answers were not received by the Committee until Feb. 3.
In the wake of FBI director nominee Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing last week, senators of both parties posed written questions to him to further explore his past comments, particularly with respect to the 2020 election and Jan. 6, 2021, and, perhaps more significantly, assess his response to a slew of recent firings within the FBI.
MSNBC has obtained those questions — known as “questions for the record” or “QFRs” — and Patel’s answers, which comprise 174 pages and reflect inquiries from a dozen members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. According to a source familiar with Patel’s nomination process, his responses were provided to the committee on Monday.
In his responses, Patel repeatedly denied any involvement in or direction of any of the FBI firings that have taken place since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, including those that have occurred since Patel’s Jan. 30 confirmation hearing.
Asked more broadly whether, for example, he discussed with anyone on the Trump transition team or in the current administration the demotion or removal of officials who were still with the FBI as of Trump’s inauguration, Patel responded, “Not that I recall.” Similarly, when asked whether he knew before his Jan. 30 testimony that “scores of senior FBI officials and rank-and-file agents assigned to the federal cases against President Trump and the Jan. 6 defendants have been told to resign or be fired,” Patel replied, “Not that I recall.”
Patel’s responses remained the same — “Not that I recall” — when asked whether, at the time of his Jan. 30 testimony, he was aware of personnel decisions impacting specific, named individuals or “any other plans to dismiss any FBI personnel” or conduct evaluations or reviews of those FBI personnel who worked on Jan. 6 cases or those related to Trump.
Asked to comment on these responses, a spokesperson for Sen. Dick Durbin, the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, referred MSNBC to a Feb. 3 letter from Durbin and other committee Democrats to Patel. That letter — which recounts Patel’s pledge, during his hearing, to protect all FBI employees against political retribution — requests that Patel provide records of his communications since Election Day with the transition team, the White House, and/or both acting and nominated DOJ and FBI leaders regarding the “removal, resignation, or reassignment” of career civil servants in DOJ, including the FBI.
The letter also calls on Patel to provide the requesting senators with any communications he has had with that group over the same time frame regarding investigations or prosecutions relating to Jan. 6 case or the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
The QFRs contain a handful of other questions to which Patel also responded, “Not that I recall.” Those questions include:
- Whether Trump or any other White House official has ever “asked, suggested, or implied” that Patel, the FBI, or DOJ “should open or undertake a review or an investigation of anyone,” including any person on Patel’s list of “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State,” as published in his 2023 book “Government Gangsters.” Patel added, “President Trump would not do that.”
- Whether Patel recommended to Trump that he revoke any individuals’ security clearances.
- Whether he discussed “using the FBI to investigate” former president Joe Biden, his administration, members of Congress, or journalists.
Patel also gave that same answer in response to some, but not all, questions about Tom Ferguson, a retired FBI agent and former aide to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan who, according to NBC News, recently joined the FBI director’s office as an adviser. Although Patel recalled a “brief call” from Ferguson to congratulate him on his nomination and “ordinary and friendly” messages with him via Signal, he was also asked whether he had seen Ferguson or communicated with Ferguson through any intermediary since the date of his nomination. In both cases, Patel replied, “Not that I recall,” but with respect to communications through others, added, “We have many mutual friends, it’s possible that I’ve asked a mutual friend to tell him ‘hello.’”
It very well may be that Patel cannot concretely recall his knowledge on those topics. But it’s notable that Patel’s language stands in contrast to many others of his responses that are less ambiguous. For example:
- When asked whether he was “aware of any plans to remove FBI agents involved in investigations of President Trump,” Patel said no.
- Asked whether, either prior to or after his testimony, he discussed the Jan. 30 firing of at least six senior FBI officials “with anyone in the administration, transition team, or outside advisors,” Patel admitted discussing “these matters with the transition team for the purposes of providing answers” to the QFRs.
- Patel stated several times that he has “never accepted compensation” for serving as a board member of Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, and accordingly, does not have “any ownership or stake in this company” from which he could divest himself. Patel further explained that without his participation, the TMTG board awarded him and other board members “a monetary award and shares” last month as “compensation for past services provided,” but that “out of an abundance of caution and to avoid any appearance of any conflict, I did not and will not accept that compensation.”
- Asked what remedy is available if Trump violates his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws, Patel opined that “[i]t is outside the purview of the FBI director to opine on the legal remedies applicable if a President were to violate particular duties.”
During Patel’s confirmation hearing, senators also expressed concern about Patel’s knowledge of, and potential involvement in, Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Under a court order compelling him to do so, Patel testified to a grand jury investigating that case in November 2022, but he generally was unwilling to discuss the substance of that testimony during his confirmation hearing.
In his written responses to senators, Patel acknowledged that witnesses are free to discuss or disclose their grand jury testimony publicly, but maintained that because the testimony remains under a court’s sealing order and given ongoing litigation about the Mar-a-Lago volume of Smith’s final report, he does “not believe I have unilateral authority to authorize release of or share any underlying testimony.”
Durbin and the other Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee have requested that acting Attorney General James McHenry give them access, by Feb. 10, to any sections of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report concerning the Mar-a-Lago investigation insofar as it discusses or reveals Patel’s grand jury testimony. To date, they have not received any response.
Under Senate rules, the Senate Judiciary Committee cannot vote on Patel’s nomination until Feb. 13. However, discussion of his nomination appears on the public agenda for an "executive business meeting" of the committee scheduled for Feb. 6.